


It starts with bloodshed

by jeanjosten



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Neil's terrible quest for identity and all, On the Run, Their identity transitions and obstacles, what am I even doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:31:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanjosten/pseuds/jeanjosten
Summary: Neil's a child on the run, he always has been—but it takes swallows of pain and a great deal of loneliness to master the art of survival. Desert gas stations, dismal public bathrooms, whiskey bottles and lost bullets, distraction, anonymity, anxiety and dusty cars. More or less.Or, Neil's voyage through the blurry concept of 'home', and how he gets through the day when he'll have to disappear in the morning.





	It starts with bloodshed

**Author's Note:**

> What is that even, I wouldn't know.  
> I just wanted to write since I haven't in a while, and next thing I know I'm 5k deep into what resembles a cold, plot-deprived sort of short story with absolutely no point and no poetry.
> 
> That was supposed to be a one-way ticket as in, open the document and once you close it it's over for good, but tbh I'm debating on whether or not I will write more on aftg in the future. Maybe I can manage a short story about Jean and Jeremy, and maybe, some stuff on Andreil as well. Maybe a collection of memories like Seth/Allison, Nicky/Neil, Aaron/Neil and all pairings romantic or not. Honestly I just love them all so much idek.
> 
> Nobody might even read that shit why am I taking so long, why. Anyway I'm oxymorts and bukowskids on tumblr. Title and poem in the beginning are from Richard Siken. Btw I'm not native so feel free to correct.

_It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same_

_running from something larger than yourself story,_

_shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair_

_with a steak knife at a rest stop,_

_and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from_

_something shameful and half-remembered. - R. S._

 

_*_

Living has always been a toxic, exhausting kind of terrible for Neil Josten. It was hiding, it was lying, it was keeping the entire world out of reach as to not be touched. It was lonely, and it was dangerous, and nights like these he couldn’t tell which one of the two was worse.

He pushed the bathroom door in an excessive sigh, knowing the arrogant edge of generic teenagers was slowly seeping in, invading his space like invisible poison. He could blame it on their last surroundings, the small town mentality of resentful gangs dreaming of getting out but too fearful to even try, of lonely and desperate kids who just couldn’t seem to figure out who they were. That, he could understand, more than anyone could have with his fourteen years of life and his jagged scars – most of the time he stood there in dismal and awe, unsure how many layers he would have to dig his bloody knuckles through to find his core, the missing pieces of his reconstructed, illusory identity. Lies, lies, smiles that barely shone; the same song all over and over again.

Anger rushed through him and he didn’t find it in himself to fight it. He let it go – for once, privileging the need to express this twisted sense of injustice and selfishness over the startling fear to find his father’s reflection in the mirror as his eyes slipped. He kicked the bathroom stalls and hit the filthy sinks. He didn’t care that he would stain his knuckles with blood or his shins with bruises; oh violence, he knew it so well—it was the only language he fluently understood even in his dreams. In the suffocating blackness of his nightmares or, perhaps were these simply memories repressed so far and deep inside that they could only come back in an uncertain, vague and blurry sense of unease. It was no surprise that he woke up every night: sore, lonely, afraid, though he couldn’t tell what of. Truth was, Neil Josten has spent his entire life being afraid, and now he couldn’t list it all. The names showing up in his bad dreams, lingering on the edge of his lips like sweat rolling down his nose; the faces he had forgotten yet would recognize anywhere; the décor of a past that was his and would always be. No matter how many identities he sought, how many masks he put on, there was one thing that would still belong to him. 

It was the same thing that had gotten Mary Hatford to suddenly rush out of Texas in the middle of the night. Neil hadn’t fought back, had barely questioned it—he knew too much. He knew what was at stake, and what the routine was like. At this point, leaving had become as natural as arriving, and it barely did anything but disappoint. Whenever he looked at the blurry surroundings fading into oblivion through his dusty car window, he couldn’t help but wonder and imagine, losing himself in a sleep that was very much awake, stroking with timid fingertips the thousands of scenarii where he could have stopped running.

None of these could ever be realistic, that much Mary knew, and that’s exactly why Neil had followed without a word. He’d dumped all his possessions in his duffel bag, barely needing to push it down to zip it closed, a life so light and deconstructed that somehow his mother was the only real thing to bring along. That didn’t mean Neil hadn’t resented the necessity of leaving, and yet again, as the gas station’s night sign clock showed four a.m., the only thing he could do was rush to the backdoor and kneel before the toilets, throwing up whatever he had last eaten. He couldn’t even remember what it was.

He was technically missing. Presumed dead. Non-existent to most of the universe. And to some rare, unlucky ones, he was the ghost of something that could have been—something terrible, something bright and bloody that echoed with the force of horrid laughters and neck-deep nightmares. He was a no-one, the kind that looked away at cash registers in unknown, anonymous gas stations on the abandoned side of the road; the kind that didn’t waste any precious second in lingering, in trying, in stalling—much less in living. He was made of fleeting patches of life and souvenirs, lives he’d made up, collected and deleted in panic, as easy as the press of a button on a telephone, a battery slipped out, the quiet bump of his remainings dumped in the trash.

As of today, Alex didn’t exist anymore.

It wouldn’t have bothered him much if he hadn’t come to like Texas’ strong weather, its eerie air of endless summer and scorching isolation. He remembered thinking, way too many times, that it looked like home. Not Baltimore. Not an exy field, either. But home, the idea of it, the mists of its concept that he could barely grasp anymore. Home wasn’t a place anymore—it was a feeling, and he’d become too much of a ghost now to find it at night, when his and Mary’s backs touched, fierce and reassuring with a warmth that screamed ‘safe’. He wiped the bile off his lips and realized a little too late that, for once, he might have traded his nothingness for a few more days as Alex. ‘It wouldn’t have killed me,’ Neil whispered to himself as he closed his eyes, sniffing hard and taking the bitter smells in despite himself—but he knew it was a lie. Maybe that was the most terrible.

 

*

 

His mother didn’t bother giving explanations when they left Texas. She rarely did, and he thought this time wouldn’t make an exception. Yet the panic had been so sharp, the need to disappear so desperate, that it became enough of a close call for them to change lanes. From the US they flew off the country and straight to Europe, to lose themselves in the unsuspecting crowds of Austrians.

Neil liked the sights, as much as he did like the snow. But whenever his chest fluttered with a sense of _home_ , he backpedaled out of the unforgiving trap and settled for the quiet resentment of not being able to bring pictures with him. Runaways like him had seen the world, but they couldn't brag about it, much less show it around on carefree pictures. At this point, he could have collected albums of puzzle-like identities, made up backgrounds and memories. It’d become a game with his mother. Sometimes she decided everything, losing herself in endless monologues as she kept her eyes on the road, barely moving enough to absentmindedly scratch her nose or gear change; sometimes, they made a conversation out of it. They’d never bring up their past identities. They’d never settle twice for the same names or the same look. Neil knew the rules, and he was exhaustingly good at the game: a perfection of a lie that he was able to build in innocent palms in two minutes flat.

It made him a pathological liar, eventually.

But it also made him incredibly good at surviving—and for all they knew, it was all that mattered.

Neil pushed the white curtains open, just enough to peep down the streets. He’d made a habit out of it, or perhaps it was his mother’s crippling paranoia that had finally seeped through. He couldn’t get away from it, much less deny it. He knew too well that Mary’s paranoia was the only thing that kept him alive and well, that had gotten him through his fifteen birthday. He put shy fingertips on the cold glass and watched as passerbys hurriedly crossed the streets at green lights, rushing to get to the other side of the road without skidding on the ice. He sighed, loud enough to know he didn’t imagine it, quiet enough that his mother wouldn’t. 

And, just as quietly, he whispered himself a happy birthday.

 

*

 

The sharp bolt of pain had him jerking upwards in a muffled groan. He was hot, he was sweating; he was burning alive. The heat panicking in his flesh was at complete odds with the plain, perfect white surrounding the highways, and he muttered a few cruses in the collar of his hoodie.

“Does it still bleed?” He heard his mother’s clean and clinical voice from the driving seat and he looked up, dizzy. She was driving and she was driving fast, and the discontented honk of drivers behind them hinted that she’d dangerously cut lanes at the last moment. She didn’t comment, she didn’t slow down. That was Mary Hatford’s specialty: to keep moving no matter what, to look in front of them no matter what was behind. She cursed the consequences to hell and would only pray for her son to be alright at the end of the day. That she wouldn’t say, but he’d know it with the tense twitch of her lips, and the focused yet troubled knot of her eyebrows he’d inherited. It didn’t matter that Neil was at peace, or that he was dreamy; his face would still betray the print of worry and fear, the indelible truth of all his lies. He’d carry his curse everywhere with him, and though the chilly blue of his real eyes screamed _father_ , he could easily decipher anxiety in his features where his mother’s caution had sunk in.

“I don’t know,” he groaned, too low to sound awake. He put a careful hand to his chest and pressed enough to check the moisture, but his shirt was as dry as could be. He tried to look down to see if it was stained, but he could only guess the discreet bump of bandages hiding his wound. “I must have pulled on it while dozing off.”

She tilted her head to the side, so fast that it was almost imaginable; so sharp that it was almost a threat. He knew better, though, and simply pressed his palm flat against the tissue, where he could make up the familiar bump and keep himself awake with pain. At this point, Neil Josten was no stranger to pain and whatever discomfort it involved; he shaped it with his hands, pulled on it as he pleased, patted down the injuries as if to reassure the tired flesh he would be alright. Blood would dry and skin would close up, and he would always be alright. Close-calls and danger had nothing on him—not that he was untouchable, immortal of some sort—but he didn’t fear pain. At least, he had mastered the art of accepting it, of dealing with the ache and the displeasure and the suffering, the shooting, acute pain that resembled existing. He pressed two fingers to his stitches and sighed in an attempt to control it. No, none of these scars and bruises and open wounds were self-inflicted, but all of them had gone through detached and painstaking care, the meticulous process of taking his body back, of owning his pain, of teaching it to be his. He’d become masochistic somewhere along the way, or perhaps were those a kind of reassuring familiarity in a vast enormity of unknown.

“Where are we going?” he asked, more out of pragmatism than curiosity. Today didn’t feel like a game, and neither he nor his mother felt like bothering. He asked because he needed to, because he liked imagining his future self before they even left their current ones behind. He wiped the feverish sweat off his forehead and looked outside, direction signs too blurry for him to read.

“Far,” she simply said. And as if hesitating, after a minute of careful silence and cold displeasure, she allowed: “France.”

 

*

 

Chris had been an easy lie to live with. Christopher for those who caught up on his accent, whatever stranger he met that shared his mother tongue. Christophe to the local French, bending his voice to conform the vowels and the fast-spoken music, learning day after day to hide himself behind foreign sonorities a little more.

They rented a room—cash, with no question asked—in a quiet neighborhood that seemed split between gloomy 24h tacky supermarkets and endless rows of scooters parked on the sidewalk. Dusty cars followed, then huge dumpsters for glass, cardboard and plastic. It didn’t take long for him to realize nobody bothered, and the all-junk dumpster overflowed a bit more as the days passed. Flyers and parking tickets were glued to the asphalt, wet from the rain and forgotten behind, and though he couldn’t care less about ecology, he had to admit the joyless sight was enough to bring him down.

The room upstairs was playing Tears for Fears’ Shout, and he listened idly as he looked outside the window. It was raining but barely, and the only thing he wanted was to go for a run. He shot his mother an obedient gaze, far, so far from the angry teenager he had once been. It wasn’t that they got along exceptionally well, or that they had much in common at all. He’d only grown mature enough to understand that he didn’t have the right to be selfish anymore. Not when his mother had sacrificed everything to keep them safe; and still held her word, minute after minute, no matter how dreary and bleak their wobbly homes felt like.

“Mom?” he tested, quietly. They never raised their voice in public, and usually kept it for their panic-driven roadtrips, far from curious sight, far from ears hanging about.

She didn’t look up from her two-euros notebook where she seemed intent on scribbling notes, probably the next itinerary to take, a safe list of names that would guarantee invisibility and disinterest, and a safe address to change her license plate and repaint the car in another plain, boring color. She hummed slightly, the only sign giving away her easy multitasking. Mary never seemed to pay too much attention to her son—survival was a full-time job. He didn’t mind. Not as much as he used to, anyway.

“I wanna go out.” She looked up, brows frowning already in a disapproving warning, but he rushed to keep the panic out of her face. “Just to run, a little bit. Thirty minutes flat. There’s a park a few streets away.” He didn’t need to locate it further, she knew perfectly what he was talking about. She’d noticed the thoughtful look he’d allowed himself toward it when they last walked for groceries. Mary was no stranger to her son’s curious coping mechanism. She assumed that, perhaps, running was his only way to stay still, a paradox that she could only tolerate given how much running their lives were made of. Sometimes it was enough to calm her down, too; as she thought that, maybe, just maybe, he’d be alright whenever something happened to her, brought up to survive, brought up to run. Some days she took pride in how fast he could get away; others she loathed the necessity of it and her role in his deconstructed existence. But it was all he could afford and all she could give him.

She seemed to hesitate a little longer, meeting his gaze as if she could see through him and his flat intentions. He had no friends, no distraction, no destination to run off to. She knew he would come back—and, better, she knew he would still find a way to survive if he couldn’t. Years of intensive teaching could only build up to this point, to this hairpin precision of an art—because surviving wasn’t a skill, it was an art, and for most, it would take a lifetime to master. Neil looked like he’d been born for it, and it was as sad as it was satisfying.

“I’m timing you. Don't stop, don't shop and don't talk to anyone,” she simply said. With that she looked at her watch, the one she never took off; and went back to scribbling anxious notes on her notebook. Neil zipped his windbreaker all the way up and almost sent the door flying as he left.

  

*

  

“I liked being Chris.” He shied away from her gaze, knowing fully by the weight of it how disapproving and discontent it was. His mother rarely allowed for regrets, much less if they involved oral remembrance of whatever had been and couldn’t be anymore.

“You never were,” she reminded him. It was a partial truth, but Neil couldn’t help thinking that, perhaps, if he wasn’t Chris, and if he wasn’t Alex, and Stefan, and all those before him, then he wasn’t anyone at all. Each identity he left behind and neatly buried was a step closer toward full oblivion, toward such a terrible world of loneliness that he could barely handle the thought of it. Surviving was a full-time task that demanded attention, care, caution and more energy than he could give; but with his mother handling both their existence in his stead, he had nothing to do but to linger on the footprints behind him, those he had to erase off the path as soon as they appeared. He was reminded of this passage in Alice in Wonderland, where some creature in the woods brushed the path clean from both front and back, leaving nothing but the void behind it. A trail of nothingness, with no evidence, with no sign of life. He was never there—he was never at all.

“I know,” he said quietly as he focused on something outside the window. It was rolled down in such a comfortable afternoon, but he still held his hand close to the command in case someone decided to stare from another open window. Caution couldn’t hurt, even when the rest of the world seemed to worry about lesser things than him. Summer, heat, gatherings and a future full of possibilities. All those things he could never have. He wondered what it would be like to graduate from high school and spend an entire summer with imaginary best friends, get drunk for the sole purpose of oblivion, have sex on backseats and childish beddings, debate over what their future would look like. From there he couldn’t quite see. All he ever could decipher at this speed was lies, lies, lies; a slight hint of survival; an ever-shy glint of hope he could never entirely bury. There was only so much he could leave behind. “It was good nonetheless.” He wasn’t sure he’d dared to say the words, but his mother thought it better not to answer. He thanked her silently, yet didn’t spare her the slightest glance. Somehow whenever they switched identities and hit the road for survival, he could barely look at her. Maybe she reminded him of all the boys he had been, or maybe it was the boy he still was nonetheless—a Wesninski, a child on the run, a fierce entity that was more of a ghost than a real person.

Mary knew that. It didn’t make her soft, nor did it make her forgiving. Sometimes they’d leave because Neil hadn’t been careful enough, because a name or a date had slipped up in a conversation, because a fingerprint had been lost where it shouldn’t, because a face felt too familiar or a place not safe enough. Today, however, she managed a brief and cold: “You get to choose your next name if you behave.” He didn’t say anything after that, and she was content with simple silence.

Neil let his hand stroke the wind as it broke their momentum, gently caressing his palm with summery warmth and an entire ocean of what-ifs. From here he could smell the salt water, but the smell of freedom was as suffocating as it was illusory. 

A lie among others shouldn’t have been so terrible, for a boy who whispered only lies.

 

*

 

“I can’t find it,” she groaned in frustration as she threw their stuff around. Clothes landed in the trunk through the open space above the backseat, and nameless items scattered on the floor underneath their seats.

“Mom,” he pressed, the edge in his voice barely enough to contain the pain.

“I can’t find it!” she repeated, louder as if it would help. She gave a frenetic shake of her hand and sat back on the driver seat, looking around in sharp panic before settling a cold gaze on her son. He was holding his abdomen, sweating awfully above a layer of a dried blood. “Wait here, Abram.” She opened the door, hesitated, and shrugged her shirt off before wiping her filthy hands in the muddy puddle and back on the shirt. She couldn’t afford to walk around with bloody hands, but she couldn’t afford the time to scrub the blood off her palms and fingernails, either. Neil watched her do so until she closed the door behind her, practically running towards the gas station as she plunged a hand in the backpocket for cash.

She came back almost two minutes later with a bottle of whiskey, cheap enough to be affordable, but strong enough to be efficient. It didn’t smell like anything, though Neil didn’t really know what to expect out of a cheap alcohol bought for the sole purpose of drowning out excruciating pain. He was still disappointed that it didn’t have a sweet aftertaste or a hint of fruit—chugged it nonetheless. Mary had barely twisted the lid off that whiskey was already rolling down his chin as he held the bottle against his lips, trembling fingers way too unhelpful. His grip on the glass went white as he held onto it, his mother working her way up his abdomen by desperately pulling on the material. It was desert enough that no one would bother to look, and uninteresting enough that there were no security cameras. Neil had become a master at spotting them first glance, and Mary had double-checked on her way to the tiny shop. They weren’t here for the tank fill, that’s for sure—and she grabbed Neil’s hair to tilt his head downward, twisting the t-shirt until it went over his head. He was still holding the bottle, so she left it there, covering biceps and shoulders only to uncover the terrible sight of a scarred, terrible body drenched in blood.

“Hold still,” she snapped, but it sounded more like a prayer and less like an order. It wasn’t a threat, either, no matter how harsh and unforgiving her touch felt. She stole the bottle for a second or two, dropped enough alcohol on his injured skin to get rid of the blood and disinfect, but as soon as she gave it back, her palm pressed flat against the injury recognized the familiar and disgusting warmth of fresh blood. “Christ,” she mumbled, and pressed hard enough to stop any hemorrhage. It was a minute shy from stopping; she could deduce by experience. “Listen to me Abram, that is very important. Did you feel the bullet go through?” She knew he most likely hadn’t, otherwise she wouldn’t be pressing down the wound so harsh—there would be another to take care of, and Neil would be almost unable to stand the pain. He took an impressive swig before closing his eyes shut, hard enough that pain looked obvious but bearable on his tense features.

“I don’t know,” he left out, and oddly realized he was out of breath. Then he tried to focus, to remember the sharp pain of a bullet impact, the trajectory it had taken and the way it had felt coming in, tearing flesh open to force its deadly way home. “No,” he tried, but it didn’t sound certain and he could feel his mother’s pressing gaze, impatient as it was terrified. “No,” he repeated, this time a bit louder. He opened his eyes with a heavy sigh of discomfort, perhaps realizing what this meant. “It didn’t go through,” and to prove a point, he tried to move, huffing out a difficult: “I can feel it.” 

“Don’t move,” she ordered, and he felt content to lean back against the seat. She took care of the wound for a while, how long, he couldn’t be sure. Minutes, hours. An eternity of scattered breaths and weary winces. He didn’t need to alert her, he didn’t need to say how much it hurt. She could barely stand the sight of it. Not that Mary Hatford was afraid of blood, oh, she was fierce and terrible, she could kill within a blink and without a twitch. It was her son however, and he wasn’t fine. The blood beneath her palm stopped leaking, but it felt heavy and gross with the weight of responsibility. She felt guilty for his very existence, for the bullet comfortably lodged in his flesh. It had come straight out of her husband’s men’s gun. A Malcolm, no doubt. She settled a gloomy, unexcited bet on the brother.

She patted the wound with the shirt she’d taken off, looked around the car in a sharp flash of anxiety, and plunged rough fingers in her son’s hair. A clumsy attempt at comfort, he thought, but he still closed his eyes at the touch, holding fiercely to whatever piece of affection she would bother to show through thick skin and layers of prudence. He should have known that gentleness was only meant to cushion the impact. “It’s going to hurt.” She didn’t bother lying or reassuring with blank words and soft promises. She only reached out for something on the backseat, fumbled a bit, and came back with the familiar glint of a blade.

Neil mumbled what could have been a resentful _oh, fuck_ as he looked away and did his best to hold the bottle still. He held his free hand between them before she could go further, and though he gave himself three swallows to find the slightest lump of courage, he didn’t stop until the seventh.

“I don’t know how deep it is, but you’re probably going to bleed some more once it’s out. Abram, do you hear me?” He nodded slightly, but his energy was starting to shy away from his movements; even his eyelids felt heavier as he made a point to stare at the bowling billboard down the road. “I need you to do your best not to pass out.” He didn’t hear the following words, but he didn’t need to—with her stern eyes, she reminded him that they were already late, that they couldn’t afford to undermine the gap between them and his father. It was the remainder that there would be no hospital, no aftercare and no meds; the sharp yet pleading order to survive. 

Next thing she said was _drink_ , and she plunged the blade into his flesh.

  

*

  

He wasn’t sure.

He’d had plenty of time to imagine whoever he could be next, and now that he had to run, to construct himself a new life of his own, he didn’t know where to start. Burning the evidence of his mother’s survival was an admirable first step, burying her scorched bones down the beach a very brave following. He’d hit the road, walking under the sun like he couldn’t quite remember why, holding his duffel bag strap closer each mile to hold onto reality; but truth is, he could go anywhere.

He could have taken the car; it still had enough gas and resources to give him a chance. But each time he thought about it, he remembered the sound of her mother’s corpse as he tried to move her from the seat, he thought about the dried blood, about the metallic smell that left no room to doubt and hope, about the way Mary’s knuckles would tighten on the steering wheel ‘til they were white. It was better off a souvenir. He didn’t have the right papers anyway, and crossing states would have been a dangerous risk to take without it.

Oh it didn’t take long for him to figure out who to become. He’d put together pieces of a ghost time and time again, an ideal nobody that he could easily embody. He just hadn’t known back then that he would have to do the rest alone, instead of suggesting names until he got his mother’s approval, instead of driving to their underground dens and getting fake IDs. He weight the pros and cons of each decision, dragged his feet in-between hitchhikes until he settled on a direction. At a station he unfolded a map open and let his gaze wonder randomly a few times—but never did it satisfy him. He put a finger down on the paper and let it wander free, until it reached a town, so small it was barely legible on the map. He squinted, leaned closer, but the impatient gaze coming from the cashier said he didn’t have much time before he’d get kicked out for using merchandise without buying it firsthand. He folded the map as quickly as he could, whispering the name on dry lips to override the crushing fear of forgetting it.

Millport sounded like somewhere people went to die. Hopefully that was where he could survive.

  

*

 

He’d been right. In another life, he could have patted himself on the back for trusting his instinct, confirming yet an umpteenth time that he was born for it, but without his mother to obnoxiously quiet him, it didn’t feel like a victory. In fact, it barely felt like anything at all—he’d imagined the pride of survival would be more than a limp layer of weariness and anxiety, but it wasn’t.

“Josten, you say?” some old lady repeated as if she’d already forgotten.

He felt irritated for a short second—already bothered enough for having to interact without having to repeat himself over and over again. Deep down he could have blamed it on the ghostly fear to forget his lies and give away a terrible truth he couldn’t afford; but it was simply bitterness. At no point in his life, Neil Josten had admitted to liking people. He could handle them at best, and manipulate them with a twist of a finger, a few careful words, a smile that would’ve fooled anyone but his mother. The closest he’d gotten to making friends had been a long, long time ago, on a somber Exy field and in a dismal room—it was also the moment he’d understood that, perhaps, he never would. Maybe that was the standard package of being part of terrible things; sharing blood and DNA with someone as unspeakable as his father. He couldn’t eternally blame it on his family, however, and Neil Josten’s loneliness mostly explained itself by two things: first of all, survival hardly allowed intimacy, and second of all, he was simply, irrevocably and irremediably the most awkward being they would have ever seen.

Some people like that quirky aspect of his personality—but most walked away, repulsed and offended by his lack of warmth, compassion and guilt. Blunt, he could be; how paradoxical of a pathological liar to be able to lie down the barest of truths without hesitation. That was what people liked to call ‘rudeness’ and, thankfully, it didn’t have to give away any of his secrets.

“Josten,” he confirmed in a voice that sounded more exhausted than he wanted. “Eighteen,” he added as she went over the space, before she could even ask. She nodded to thank him for what she misunderstood as helpfulness, and he gave an anxious look around. Millport’s high school wasn’t the prettiest of all, and it surely wasn’t one to be proud of, but it wasn’t the biggest, either, and that was exactly the reason why he was able to enroll. It didn’t take much paper, and lied his way around the missing parts of his paperwork. Chances were they didn’t care, and as he slid a gaze toward the bench at his left, he understood why. Millport had worse students to take care of than himself, judging by the awful shiner the athlete sported. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized an Exy ball in the hand of the stranger, but tore his gaze away before it could be mistaken as interest.

The day after, the perfect and boring lie that was Neil Josten joined the Exy team. It didn’t take much: the Coach, Hernandez, offered a free pass for a try-out training, and the Dingoes were small and unskilled enough that his arrival was a privilege. Small towns preferred football to Exy, which he couldn’t possibly understand, but a look at the Millport Dingoes brought him the information he needed to fill the gaps: they were a terrible, sloppy team that no one would bother to join.

He took whatever number they offered first. The position, though, he didn’t get to choose—they had enough backliners as it was and didn’t need another one. Their offense line, however, was mostly what made them terrible, and they all considered him as the opportunity to rank up. He didn’t protest, more out of desperation and obsession for the sport than out of generosity. He couldn’t care less about the team’s ranking: in a few months, he’d be so far, far away from here that they wouldn’t even remember he’d stopped by.

Neil Josten would be a lie long forgotten, buried in the savage steps of his runaway.

  

*

  

Or so he thought.

 

*

  

It had started with blood, with fear. With the need for survival nobody could quite explain—perhaps the instinct itself, impossible to repress, unquestioned and left alone. He did as he had to because it appeared it didn’t have any other choice. And for a long time, it felt like it.

Then, he’d realized something he’d have liked better unknown: perhaps his survival instinct was his mother herself, and without so, he was bound to fall—bound to exist—bound to disappear once and for all, lies extinct and stepped upon, truth laid so bare and obvious that he would have to beg for forgiveness. He didn’t fear what would happen if he ever lost himself in one of his lies, if he ever lingered a second too long or a town too close. Neil, no matter how good he was at surviving, preferred the subtle comfort of denial rather than the cold reality of nothingness.

He liked being Neil Josten because, at least, he was something at all. It didn’t matter that Neil Josten was a coward, a pushover, a pile of lies or a loner. It didn’t matter that he loathed whatever Neil Josten represented. It mattered even less that the illusion fooled everyone, even himself. There was nothing more dangerous than that.


End file.
